The Green Chain: Eat, pray, lovin' it

On our way to the airport on the island of Bali (in Indonesia) we passed a McDonald's restaurant. To some, McDonald's represents the evil of corporations and their homogenization of the world, and its cultures, into one giant strip mall?McDonaldization. To me, McDonald's represents what one writer calls "Ricardo's Magic Trick."

We were returning home from attending my son's wedding. He and his now wife live in,Bali at the moment. They are both Americans who met in Uganda, moved to Ubud, Bali so she could get a yoga teacher certification, and then got married there. (I know, it's so typical it's a clich?.) An artsy town, Ubud is Carmel or Mendocino without the sea, and pretends not to be upscale by keeping its village atmosphere fa?ade. This is often done by not allowing in fast food franchises.

My wife and I stayed in a bed and breakfast ("home stay") in Ubud not far from where Elizabeth Gilbert's character in the movie Eat, Pray, Love had stayed. In the book and the movie ? after eating (indulging herself in Italy) and praying (asceticism in India), Gilbert tries to find balance in her life by staying in Bali. Instead of Balance, she finds love. I also don't know if she found Ubud's one franchise, a tastefully decorated Starbucks (because even Dr. Evil's island hideout had a Starbucks).

McDonald's is a company that is good at one thing: delivering consistent, cooked food quickly at a reasonable price. They had tried to put one of their franchises in Ubud, but the outcry by white expatriates wanting an authentic Balinese experience kept the franchise out. Doing one thing well was what 18th century British economist, David Ricardo, called "comparative advantage." Ricardo said that a person (or region or state) does not need to be able to do everything, but needs to do one thing only and then trade for the rest. The result saved labor and thus saved time to do other more profitable things.

Since ancient times, people have been on the go with little time available to make their own meals. Before the era of Christ, the people of Pompeii stopped at cauponae, sort of an early version of a McDonald's restaurant that was loved by the ancient Romans. Caupone were frequented by the lower and middle classes for grabbing a bite before hurrying off to work elsewhere. They paid others to make their meals so that they didn't have to worry about shopping, storing, cooking, and cleaning. The upper classes had their meals prepared at their homes. (Does this sound familiar?)

Of course, by doing only one thing, we must rely on others to provide those other things we need. Matt Ridley, in his book, The Rational Optimist, argues that such a requirement is a good thing: "Interdependence of the world through trade is the very thing that makes modern life as sustainable as it is." He writes, "[S]uppose your local wheat farmer tells you that last year's rains means he will have to cut his flour delivery in half. You will have to go hungry." Today, you benefit from a global marketplace "in which somebody somewhere has something to sell you so there are rarely shortages, only modest price fluctuations."

When we trade, we no longer have to do lots of tasks to keep going; we can trade our labor in one thing for others' labors in other things.

Trading means that we weigh the costs (not just the price but also the social implications) against the benefits (the need for the thing and its cost to our bank account and its result to our reputation) and do the one that outweighs the other.

In the case of McDonald's, the expats felt that it would diminish their authentic Ubud experience. Many of the locals felt they were authentic enough and were willing to make the trade, thus freeing up time to do something else besides preparing food: "Cheap fast food? Sign me up; I've got to get to work!"

Norm Benson is a registered professional forester and worked three decades for CAL FIRE before embarking on a writing career. He is currently working on a biography of Walter C. Lowdermilk and can be found writing online at http://normbenson.com/timberati/.